This specification relates to search engines.
A search engine may receive a search query, and may search for resources on a network using the terms of the search query. The search engine may generate a search engine results page that includes multiple search results, each search result including, for example, links to resources that the search engine identifies as relevant to the query terms.
A search engine may also provide an auto-completion service. For instance, if a user begins typing characters into a search box of a search engine home page, an auto-completion engine at the search engine may provide the user with suggested query terms based on the entered characters. For example, if the user enters the characters “cot.” into a search box, the auto-completion engine may provide the user with suggested query terms such as “coffee,” “coffee bean,” and “coffin.” If the user selects a particular suggested query term, the query term is submitted to the search engine as part of a search query, as though the user had entered the entire suggested query term and submitted the search query themselves.